


Jump Out and Say 'Gotcha.'

by Leidolette



Category: Irrefutable Truth About Demons (2000)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8357647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: There are few things that survive the finality of death. Apparently, a prank war is one of them.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



Half the salt spilled from the suddenly open end of the shaker across his scrambled eggs when Harry Ballard had only wanted a quick dash. 

"Shit!" He said, mostly out of surprise. Most of his dining companions ignored him -- outbursts of swearing weren't unusual at the mental treatment facility. 

Bennie, however, leaned towards him with mild interest. 

"Your eggs are like the sea," she said. 

"Great. That wasn't exactly my intention."

She gave him a look like she was seeing right through him. Like she was seeing though the walls of the facility itself. Out over the mountains and the ocean, and beyond the Earth's orbit until her gaze passed even the gravity well of a black hole. Then she said: "Are you going to eat that?"

"No," Harry said, and pushed the tray towards her. Bennie set in on eggs that must be nearly fifty percent salt with a gusto. Harry sighed. 

A week later, in the shower, Harry's eyes were closed under the warm spray as he washed the shampoo out of his hair. He had just enough time to barely make out the sound of far away, goofy giggling over the din of water pounding against his ears, before a sudden tidal wave of freezing water poured down over his head from over the stall wall. 

Harry would have sworn again, but all he could do was sputter as the deluge subsided. He heard that laugh again, bouncing off the tile walls of the bathroom, distorting with each reflection. Swiping the water out of his eyes, Harry rushed out of shower with the intention of catching this mysterious asshole before he got away. 

But there was nothing. Harry stood there, dripping and naked, looking around the empty room. The still-running shower was the only remaining sound. 

He suspected Bennie -- of course he suspected Bennie -- even though it didn't seem like her style. She denied it, but he was thinking about ways to catch her in the act as he got ready for bed several nights later. There wasn't much to his bedtime ritual; after brushing his teeth, he took off his clothes and changed into a pair of pajama bottoms (which were nearly indistinguishable from his day wear at the institute anyways) before flicking the lights off and getting into bed.

He was still thinking about how to catch Bennie when slid under the sheets. His feet were stopped suddenly halfway down the bed -- he seemed to be trapped in a little pocket of sheets. He stared stupidly at the covers for a moment before realizing what had happened. Someone had short sheeted the bed. 

"Okay, now this is just fucking ridiculous," he said into the darkness. 

Surprisingly, the darkness talked back. 

"Hey, Doc."

He might not have admitted outright, but, privately, Harry thought he was pretty jaded when it came to the supernatural. After all that had happened, how could he not be? And yet, just like anyone else, when a voice -- both familiar and strange -- echoed out of the darkest corner of his bedroom, he jumped and whirled around in an extremely undignified manner. 

And, yes, sitting there in the clinical chair that was one of only three items of furniture in the room besides the bed and the desk, there was just the faintest outline of a man in the gloom. 

"What are you," Harry growled at the figure, having regained most of his composure. He resigned himself to once again facing the denizens of hell while shirtless. 

"Come on, man, don't you recognize me?"

The figure leaned forward, lighting his face in a beam of moonlight. "This isn't one of those places that hands out lobotomies like candy, right?"

It was Johnny. But not quite as Harry had known him in life. Just like Harry's brother, Johnny's eyes were now pools of pitch; in the low light they were so black they looked hollow. When Johnny spoke, his teeth bristled to monstrous points. His skin was pale, except for his lips and the area around his eyes, which was an unsettling sallow color. 

"I remember your pranks being more creative when you were alive," Harry said tersely, still not quite believing he was actually talking to the ghost of his dead friend. 

"What can I say? The afterlife has some real good weed. It's kinda going to my head," the man said. That sounded a lot like something that Johnny would say, Harry privately admitted. Accepting that this apparition truly was Johnny came with it's own problems, however. 

"So you're in... heaven?"

Johnny shrugged. "I dunno, Doc. Being dead's a lot more complicated than I would've thought."

"Huh," Harry said, leaving it at that. 

Then there was silence. Harry didn't know what to say. What exactly were you supposed to say to a friend who had gotten his rib cage cracked open on the street just because you hated cults?

For the first time, Johnny began to look uneasy as the quiet stretched on. He shifted in his chair. "You're not, like, still mad about any of that stuff I did, right? I mean, it was all just harmless..."

Harry stared at Johnny for a heartbeat longer, quietly deciding something. Then he said, "I'll forgive you, if you share some of that divine weed."

Johnny grinned, and despite the shining black eyes, he seemed just like Harry's old friend again when he said, "Hey, Doc, get your own stash, you freeloader."

Harry smiled back. "And you better watch out. This prank war's not over yet."

"Bring it, old man!" Johnny laughed. 

Harry laughed too, mostly from the wonderful feeling of having a friendly face back in front of him, one that he'd never thought he would ever see again. 

"Hey, who are you calling--" Harry began to say. 

But then Johnny was gone. Without a sound, and without a flash, he had simply disappeared. 

Sitting alone in the aftermath, Harry was stuck with the final, impossible question: how do you prank a ghost?

**Author's Note:**

> The highlight of writing this story was the the wikiHow article I read to understand short sheeting. In addition to the ridiculous picture and speech balloons, the instructions also act like you need to spend a week and a half doing surveillance to memorize the intricacies of your target's bed making routine in order to successfully pull off this prank. 
> 
> http://www.wikihow.com/Short-Sheet-a-Bed
> 
> The title also comes from this article.


End file.
